


Wherever you'll go, I'll follow

by ayamirin



Series: keep passing the open windows [3]
Category: Bandom, Panic! at the Disco, The Heart Rate of a Mouse Series - Anna Green, Young Veins
Genre: M/M, Mild Language, Not Beta Read, Spencer Smith - Mention, the heart rate of a mouse - Freeform, throam - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-06-10
Updated: 2017-06-10
Packaged: 2018-11-12 06:19:45
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,171
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11156022
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ayamirin/pseuds/ayamirin
Summary: [Fanfic for THROAM]2004, Ryan Ross gives an interview to Vanity Fair about the impact The Follower's second, and final, album has made on his life.=======“ When the band fell apart, I didn't think that my sexuality would end up becoming the lasting impression of that album or the band. I just thought that it would all go away. Be a grain in the sand.”After the crash, Ross went to Europe to essentially find himself again. But it was a trying time for the vocalist. Up until the end of the tour, Ross was convinced that he was a straight man but his affair with Roscoe during that summer had confused him greatly.





	Wherever you'll go, I'll follow

**Author's Note:**

> This is a fanfic to the fanfic [The Heart Rate of a Mouse](http://archiveofourown.org/series/712953) written by Anna Green.

Vanity Fair

March 2004

“Boneless, Me, and That Gentlemen“

By Suzie Smith-Jones

 

In 1974, my father and his band released their second album  _ Boneless _ to unexpected critical acclaim and financial success. Overnight, the Followers had went from a band of young and naive musicians just wanting to get their voices and visions heard to teen pop idols with a number one record. Half of band enjoyed the fame; every night on that tour was spent swimming in expensive liquor, taking the best drugs, and sleeping with nameless faces with nice bodies. The other half struggled with the fame finding the parties difficult, the drugs and alcohol just an escape, and avoiding temptation of free sex.

But for those looking from the outside, with no way in, The Follower’s  _ Boneless _ was a revolutionary album that resonated with a crowd of teenagers in an age where war was an all too normal reality, trust in the government was lost, and civil rights was changing the fabric of American society. With vocalist Ryan Ross’ lyrics and compositions, teens were allowed to forget it all. Their worries and fears of an uncertain future had become background noise when  _ Miranda’s Dream _ would play on .45s on a hot summer day, allowing them to slip away in a psychedelic haze of melancholy and a summer concert tour would let them be ‘them’ for a short two hours in a lifetime of moments.

Unbeknownst to those teens, Ross’ lyrics were not an escape but a reality. And that tour,  _ Jackie Me and This Lady _ , allowed those lyrics to continuously manifest themselves into his life. My father told me that every night, before the start of a show, he'd have to reassure his childhood friend to get the courage to get on stage, and despite his own personal problems, he took it upon himself to make sure the band got through another night. It was the unseen, ugly truth that the Followers had a lot more demons to conquer within themselves and no amount of fame and fortune was going to help it go away. It had only made it worst.

A bus crashed ended the tour and the band. Ross’ ran off to Europe, Trohman finally got his name in lights, Wilson decided to enjoy life with Ross’ girlfriend, and Smith tried to be my father after months of hiding his family from prying eyes like a shameful secret. The crash is infamous as the release of  _ Boneless _ . No one can think of that band without the tour and the bus crash coming one after the other. A tell tale sign of what happens when fame comes too quickly.

Or, so, that's what we had all thought until eight years ago when news had broken out that ex-the Followers/Whiskies frontman Ryan Ross was actually in a long term relationship with the frontman of my father’s then band, His Side’s Brendon Roscoe.

Prior to 1996,  _ Boneless  _ and the Jackie tour represented what I had explained. An escape from reality for lost teens exposed to a cruel world. After 1996, the legacy had changed from groundbreaking rock album to that tour where Ryan met a roadie named Brendon Urie, fell in love, and turned his lover into a bonafide rock star.

“ The band broke up because of that.” Ryan Ross would tell me as we sit in his living room. He sits on the couch, with his long legs curled underneath him and a glass of scotch in hand. “ There was a lot of problems but  _ that _ was the final straw that broke the camel’s back.”

Ross was never one for opening up. Even when the tabloids outed him and his partner of 30 years, he never made an official statement. He, instead, let Roscoe do all the talking on their behalf. He decided to hide away from the public eye, only making the few required public appearances by his management and record label. Now, I'm sitting in his living room interviewing him about this topic. He was hesitant to allow our photographer into the home for the photoshoot. During the shoot, he takes the opportunity to remind me that he only agreed to this interview because of who my father was. Otherwise, there would have been no interview.

His living room is adorned with framed photos of him and his partner throughout the years. Awards accentuate the white space: Grammys, American Music Awards, Billboard, MTV and many other adorn various table tops with pictures from those night in frames. It's a reminder of a life of success but an overcast of half-truths: many of the photos only feature one of them or with a female friend on their arm as their ‘date’ to hide the truth from the public. 

“ When the band fell apart, I didn't think that my sexuality would end up becoming the lasting impression of that album or the band. I just thought that it would all go away. Be a grain in the sand.”

After the crash, Ross went to Europe to essentially find himself again. But it was a trying time for the vocalist. Up until the end of the tour, Ross was convinced that he was a straight man but his affair with Roscoe during that summer had confused him greatly. 

“ I didn't know what the fuck was going on. I just knew I needed to get away and figure things out, y’know? Get it out my system and find me again. The touring and the rapid success of the Followers really got to me.” He says, “ But it didn't work. I saw him again and everything just fell apart. Like, ‘ Fuck. This is really happening. We're colliding again.’”

After the tour, Ross and Roscoe had separated for nearly two years before meeting each other again in New York City at a social event. From there, Ross discovered Roscoe’s talent and got him signed to Columbia where His Side eventually was born, creating an enduring legacy of hits of sexual and political provocation that shook up the 80s and 90s. 

“ I knew he was talented when we were on the Jackie tour. He would play around with the instruments during sound checks and stuff. I didn't really hear him sing until I met him again in New York… but I always knew he had that talent. Talent like that shouldn’t be hidden from the world.”

Ross eventually pulls out a photo album from the bookcase in the modest living room of their Orange County condo. He opens it up to a page and points to the polaroids of him on the Jackie tour. Most are him in the background toying with his guitar or sitting with a beer in hand, looking wistfully. He tells me he threatened to quit the band three times that tour, with the third time being the unlucky charm ending with a crash and a bang. There are some polaroids of him and Roscoe, sitting together and talking in depth.

I flip through, noticing the growing frequency of the pictures that have the two together versus apart. From first glance, it doesn't seem anything out of the ordinary but if you take a harder look, you'll begin to notice little things such as smiles and the close proximity of their bodies. 

“ I can't believe I got away with dressing like that.” Brendon Roscoe says as he looks over my shoulder at the photographs of him on that tour. The pictures are quite time compared to his more flamboyant outfits from the early to mid 80s. There’s no eyeliner, loud eyeshadows, and bloody red lipstick. Just plain faces, jeans and t-shirts.

Roscoe and Ross move around with a familiarity like an old, married couple. Roscoe will find and show me albums filled with embarrassing memories and Ross will nag at him to stop in between laughter. They get caught up within themselves, in their own little world where no one else exists and our photographer takes advantage of the moments. 

This goes on for at least twenty minutes, but for these two men, this has been their story for the last twenty five years that they have been living together. Though, no one had known that fact until seventeen years later with a salacious tabloid.

They explained how it was difficult to maintain the secrecy of their relationship and lifestyle out the public eye for as long as they have did. Roscoe and his band skyrocketed into fame with their bright eccentric visuals, lead by Roscoe blurring gender lines, while Ross cemented himself as an award winning songwriter and producer. He occasionally would release a song and eventually one last album before staying in the background completely to focus on the studio.

“ We lived modestly, and still do, but Brendon should have been driving fast cars and dating women and doing that thing everyone young and famous was doing then. I think the fear of being caught kept us from doing so.” Ross says. “ It's kind of hard to attend award shows and album release parties separately and leave separately just so no one knows you're actually living together.”

“ It felt like we were always coming up with a battle plan. ‘ Okay, so you’ll leave around three and check in at the hotel they've booked and I'll drive over to the Shrine Auditorium around five.’ Stuff like that.” Roscoe later adds with a laugh.

The moment Roscoe is talking about is when His Side and Ross were both nominated for Grammy awards at the 1984 Grammys for Record of the Year, a song they both penned together. It ended up winning that night:  _ Wherever You’ll Go, I’ll Follow _ . I remember that night as I watched it two thousand miles away. My father held the award while Roscoe made his speech about the song and it’s meaning. There were so many people on stage; the band and the producers on the song, but the individual that stuck out the most was Ryan Ross. He stood off to the side and just watched. 

“ I wanted him to say something. He was the co writer on the song, after all. But he insisted to stay as far away as possible.” Roscoe says.  

 Ross follows up, “ It was his moment. I didn’t need to be in it.”

It's funny for them to look back on it now but it was definitely hard and trying for the two of them twenty years ago. Now and days, they appear on red carpets together as a couple. Sometimes holding hands, sometimes with their hands around each other’s waists, and other times just side by side. There isn’t a need for them to plan ways to avoid the prying eye of the paparazzi and the press. They’re comfortable with themselves and their relationship.

“ It took a long time for me to be comfortable in my own skin,” Ross says as he flips through the pages of the photo album he had initially shown me. “ I didn’t want people to know about my sexuality because I didn’t want that to overshadow my music. I think we were both learning how to balance it all.”

“ Thirty years ago I didn’t care who knew. If they didn’t like me because I was gay, fuck ‘em. But, as I got older and left the safe confines of San Francisco, I learned that wasn’t the case. I had to learn to be subtle because there was so much discrimination.”

Ross shakes his head, “ A taxi driver kicked us out on the way to his first meeting at Columbia when I slipped up and called him, ‘baby’.” 

“ Suspicion always followed us. I didn’t want to be in the closet. That’s why His Side did what it did. Why I did what I did. Ryan, on the other hand, was happy with what he had. I think we just wanted to protect us because it took us so long to finally get to that point in our relationship.” 

As our time nears its end, Roscoe has now made himself comfortable on the cream colored couch with Ross at his side. The coffee table that separates us is covered in photo albums, fan letters, records, and magazines cutouts. Ross picks up the .45 of the Follower’s  _ Boneless _ and looks at the cover, flips it over and reads the back.

“ Thirty years ago I got into a recording studio with my childhood friend, your father, and recorded this album with two guys that I had considered good friends. I just wanted to get my frustrations out and into the open. I didn’t think that this album would change my life. I didn’t think I would meet a man named Brendon Urie on tour for this and have him flip my world upside down.” Ross says. “ This album represents a lot of things to a lot of people but for me this album represents the beginning of a life I am so glad to have experienced. If I could do it all over again, I would.”

**Author's Note:**

> My THROAM headcanon: Suzie becomes a journalist.
> 
> Thanks for reading!


End file.
